Six Stretches Most Athletes Need

When I design a training program for a specific athlete’s sport, there are many areas to focus on including: strength, conditioning, speed/power, mobility/flexibility and recovery.   It is very common to focus on the areas that seem like they are the most beneficial for athletic gains.  In the case of sports performance training, it’s the training for the sport itself and the speed and power work which are usually most attractive to the player while the mobility, flexibility and recovery modalities take a back seat.

This approach may work for a short while, especially if the athlete is young, injury free and plays a sport that is not completely single-side dominant.  When the athlete starts to mature, the accumulation of years of the same sports stress combined with postural challenges, like sitting in the classroom and doing work on the computer, can cause many problems.  The neglected areas of mobility and flexibility may lead to muscle soreness, lack of movement, decrease in athletic performance, or even result in injury.

Let’s face it, stretching is not fun or exciting but a small venture into the dullness a few times a week can vastly improve your performance, recovery and keep you off the sidelines and in the game.

Below are some of the most common areas I have found to be tight on athletes and the mobility and stretches that correspond to the assistance of relieving the tight area.  When performing these stretches be aware of proper body alignment and be prepared to hold the stretch for more than the commonly proclaimed “30 seconds.”  It can take up to two minutes for tight muscles to release so hold on to those stretching positions a bit longer.

Ankles

This area of the body cannot actually be stretched because the ankle is a joint.  However, the ankle can be mobilized.   The ankle is the foundational structure for support and movement for the entire body.  In sports, movement begins from the ground and then generates power upward and in the applied directions.  If the ranges of motion of the ankles are not optimal, structural alignment of the joint and limbs will be offline.  Off-alignment makes the body absorb and distribute energy in inappropriate directions therefore decreasing the maximal power generated and possibly setting you up for a joint injury.

To mobilize the ankles and stretch the muscles of the calves: have your front foot flat on the floor with your toes three to six inches away from a wall.  Place your hands on the wall and gently pulse your lower leg and knee forward keeping the knee aligned with the toes.  The ankle mobility should increase and you can judge this by how close your knee gets to the wall.

Hamstrings

Hamstrings are the collective group of muscles of the back of the leg that are used to extend the hip and flex the knee.  In sports the hamstring muscles are important for: generating the quick first step, jumping, stabilizing the knees for cutting and deceleration of the body to stop quickly and change directions.

With their numerous functions it is common for these muscles to get tight due to their overuse.  If they stay tight for too long optimal use of these muscles decreases, stiffness of the legs and low back can occur and possibly a muscle pull or injury occurs that will keep you out of the game.

To stretch the hamstrings: I like to lay supine on the floor and use a long strap for leverage.  Loop the strap around the ball of your foot and bring your leg to its end range of motion where you feel tension; making sure the non-stretched leg is flat on the floor and not popping up.  Once I’ve established my end range position without straining, I then begin to contract my thigh muscles and hold the contraction for a few seconds and then release the muscles along with my breath and gain a few more degrees in the range of motion.

There are variations to this stretch that you can check out more in depth in my article: How are your Hammies

Hip Flexors 

The hip flexors are the muscle group that pulls the knee towards the chest.  In sports they are used for running and jumping.  These muscles get tight really easily.  As a student athlete I remembered going to early morning practice for soccer and then sitting in classrooms for the next five hours and then going to afternoon practice.  After all of the training in the morning and then all of the sitting at my desk, my hip flexors would tighten up tremendously.

All of us sit more then we should for our body’s health and the hip flexors are tight because of this.  If they get too tight not only will optimal performance be decreased but they can pull the hips out of alignment and this can lead to sore lower backs, postural changes and even injuries of the surrounding muscles.

There are several ways to stretch the hip flexors and you may have to perform more than one way to get them loose.  In my Sports Performance Series I talked about the role of the hip flexors in sports, how to test their length and what movements strengthen the hip flexors.

In terms of their recovery and resting length: one of my favorite stretches has you put your back leg on a bench and front foot on the floor.  Tilt your hips forward as if you are tucking them underneath you.  Maintain this position; sink the hips downward letting gravity assist.  When the hip flexors begin to release you may sit your hips back towards the heel of the elevated foot to increase the stretch intensity of the quadriceps muscles.

Hip Rotators 

These muscles can get really tight much like the hip flexors do when sitting all day.  The hip rotators are primarily the glute muscles and their function is to stabilize, rotate and extend the legs.  All of these movements are necessary for sport applications and if they don’t respond well then neither will your playing ability.  These muscles also tend to be tighter on one side than the other which can throw off hip and leg alignment which may cause low back tightness and pain.

To stretch the hip rotator muscles:  find a box or a table that is around the height of your hips.  Turn your foot inward towards the middle of your body and have your knee outside of the body.  Rest the outside of the leg on the surface finding a position that is comfortable and does not aggravate the knee or ankle joints.   My left side likes to tighten up more than my right and if it is really bad then I cannot rest my knee on the surface.  When this happens I place a mat or pad under the elevated knee so it has something to rest against and therefore will want to relax and stretch.  As it begins to release I take the pad away and let it rest on the surface

Thoracic Spine

The thoracic spine or T-Spine is the area of the upper back around the level of the shoulder blades.  Much of the movements we perform during sports and our daily lives involve going forward or dealing with objects right in front of us.  Sports, driving and even while I sit here and create this article for you, my shoulder blades are being pulled forward because of the position I am in.  The chest muscles get really short and tight and mobility of the thoracic spine becomes limited due to the tightness.  For rotational sports like tennis and golf this can inhibit the range of motion needed to perform well and for the rest of us this tightness and lack of mobility can lead to the rounded back posture.

A great way to keep the T-Spine mobilized is to use a roller:  Lie on the floor and place the roller on your back near the bottom of the shoulder blades.  Keeping the hips down and the body aligned properly, let the upper back extend backwards over the roller and then, when stretched, bring it back to the neutral position.  It is important to think about only moving the upper back and not the entire spine, this is not a crunch.

                             

Lat Stretch

The Lattissimus dorsi muscles are the big wing shaped muscles of the back just below the shoulder blades.  The muscle inserts into the upper arm and is used to bring the arm towards the body for action and support.  The muscles are anchored at the shoulder blade, ribs, spine and the hip.  With all of these attachments if any of them becomes too tight it can throw off alignment of many areas of the body therefore causing its function to decrease and soreness and pain of the arms and back can occur.

One of my favorite stretches to maintain proper alignment is the lateral bend with support:  I like to use a squat rack; however a doorway can work just fine.  With one arm, reach across and over your head, with the near arm keep it lower, by the hip for support.  When you get your grips make sure the hips are rotated and aligned.  When aligned, slowly move the far hip away and you should feel a stretch in the area where the lats insert.

There you have six stretches to help you perform at your best.  Best to choose a few that you need to do and perform them a few times throughout the week.

Tags: flexability

Considerations for Year-Round Athletes: Part II

In the first installment of this series we looked at the studies and learned that young athletes, who participate in the same sport for too long, without having adequate time for recovery, run the risk of several overuse injuries.  There are several studies like R.M. Malina’s that discuss the nature that specialization may not only hinder future athletic success within that sport but could also lead to more detrimental health problems down the road.

“Limiting experiences to a single sport is not the best path to elite status. Risks of early specialization include social isolation, overdependence, burnout, and perhaps risk of overuse injury.”

Unfortunately, it seems that the trend of focusing on a single sport is not going to stop.  Young athletes feel the need to play and the parents feel the pressure to give them every advantage as they can.  This includes traveling teams, private training and even strength and conditioning programs.

In this article I will discuss what we as strength and conditioning coaches can do to help the student athletes without adding to the overtraining problem.

Athletes have Goals and so should Strength Coaches

Ask one of the athletes what their goals are and they are most likely to respond with something physical; be stronger, be faster, be a better athlete.  Strength coaches are there to help them achieve these goals and make them more efficient at performing these physical tasks; however it is important for strength coaches to also have a set of goals for their athletes.  For my athletes, I remind myself that my main goal is to make sure they remain healthy.  I want to work with them and not contribute to any potential setbacks for training or athletic performance by adding more unnecessary training stress to an already busy athletic child.

I see myself as their coach but not the type of coach who is going to try to break the athlete.  Some strength and conditioning coaches have the mindset of making the training harder than the game and therefore pushing their athletes to the limit.  Athletes should be tested at times but never broken and never when they are unable to perform optimally.

At Rise Above Performance Training, the goal is to help the athlete.  I don’t try to bend, break or arbitrarily train athletes; I work with them to improve their overall performance potential.  When you help the athlete you are choosing correct movements, loading parameters, volume and duration for that given day.  Helping athletes in a positive and encouraging manner yields great results without less likelihood of sending the athlete down the road of self destruction.

Periodization with Improvisation

We might have heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, plan to fail;” I believe this to be true with strength and conditioning programs.  I choose to start my programs with asking the athletes about goals, what their timeline is and if they have any important events coming up.  Then I complete a physical assessment looking at basic mobility and stability of the joints and muscles.  After considering all of these factors, a program is designed and a few weeks training cycle is implemented including: the training movements, sets, reps, rest and duration.  In a perfect world an athlete would simply follow the program prescribed and get results; however there are other factors involved that could affect positive results, namely, the state of the athlete for that day.

With the athlete playing year-round, daily assessment of the athlete’s current condition is necessary to ensure progress, not regression.  How are they feeling today? Did they get enough sleep, nourishment, recovery between training and competing?  Looking forward to upcoming events also plays a big role in the athlete’s programming.  Big events, heavy sport training and weekend tournaments all should be factored into the equation and planned for accordingly.

If the athlete is coming off a weekend tournament where they played a total of five soccer games in the heat and plans on coming into the gym to train the following Tuesday, chances are that the athlete is not going to be able to handle the full intensity of the program provided.  Spending more time on restorative protocols like foam rolling, mobility drills, and stretching will deal with soreness and accommodate healing of the tired muscles.

Decreasing the volume and intensity allows the athlete to train without the heightened risk of potential overtraining.  If training programs calls for deadlifts, four sets of six reps, at 70% max weight, an adjusted protocol might be three sets of three reps at 50% for that day.  The athlete is still getting the movement in but the intensity and volume is much lower than planned so optimal recovery is gained.

Summing it all Up

As we learned from this two part series, participating in the same sport year-round is a very popular practice among young athletes and this trend seems like it is here to stay.  Coaches and parents need to realize that this participation increases the athlete’s risk of overuse injuries.

Strength and conditioning coaches should formulate programs that are part of the solution and not the problem.  Sport practices, training and games played are not likely to change much, therefore it is important for the strength coach to adjust his program to make sure that it continually helps the athlete, whether through strength training itself or through the restoration process.

Recognize these limitations so we do not have young athletes with problems like this:

References:
Malina, RM, Early Sport Specialization:Roots, effectiveness, risks. Curr. Sports Med. Rep, 2010. Nov-Dec;9 (6):364-71.

Tags: athlete training

Considerations for Year-Round Athletes: Part I

A long and grueling regular high school season is coming to a close.  All of the practices and training have paid off and your team has done well and now the league playoffs are about to begin.  Two games a week and practice in between.  Winning is a must so the team can qualify for sectionals which is another two weeks of the same schedule, a tiring month of training and playing after a few month of regular season but the experience was truly memorable; now it’s time to rest right?  Not so fast.  Your club team is practicing on Thursday for their first game on Saturday.

The scenario above is not a nightmare it is becoming more and more of a reality for many of the athletes that I train.  Though this schedule will only work for those who truly enjoy their sport and strive to achieve as much as they can with it, it still comes with a price especially if the student-athlete is not prepared to deal with the different types of stress associated with this scenario.

As a trainer, this year-round same-sport chasm is not seen as ideal for maximal athletic gains and personal well being of the athlete.  However, this trend does not seem to be going anywhere and as trainer to athletes we have to adjust to make sure we are not adding to the stress the athlete is undergoing.

In Part One of this series I will discuss some of the pitfalls student athletes face as well as some considerations for the athletes, their parents and the coaches who train them.

More is Better Right?

This new, growing trend of choosing one sport and playing it year-round may have been taken from the pro athlete handbook.  We see continually longer season for the NHL, MLB and other sports with after season playoff series and tournaments.  Many student athletes have aspirations of playing at the next level and therefore dedicate as much time as possible to training and competition for their sport.  Student athletes may be young and resilient and seem like they can handle these frequent, high-intensity training session and games, however, they face other added stress that professional athletes do not.

Life outside of their sports consist of homework, studying, college applications, standardized entrance exams, jobs, socializing, and the list can go on from there.  The management of all of these priorities is a daunting task and is usually associated with cutting into sleep and recovery time.  With the busy lives student athletes have, it is crucial to focus on a balanced program giving close consideration to appropriate rest so they can continue to perform their tasks to the best of their ability and minimize fatigue of the body and mind.

What Do the Studies Say?

As the trend grows, thankfully the scientific research is growing as well.  Stein et al. outlined several risk factors for young athletes including: “Presence of growth cartilage, existence of muscle imbalance, and pressure to compete despite pain and fatigue.”  They also concluded that that playing sports year-round has been linked to a myriad of increased overuse injuries including: “Patellofemoral pain, Osgood-Schlatter disease, Calcaneal Apophysitis, Little League elbow, Little League shoulder, Spondylolysis, and Osteochondritis Dissecans.”

Along the same lines, Brenner et al. found that the incidence of overuse injuries is increasing with the year-round athlete.  According to their study, “Many children are over-trained which can lead to burnout which may have a detrimental effect on the child participating in sports as a lifelong healthy activity.”

Kenttä  et al. stated, “Heavy training in combination with inadequate recovery actions can result in the over-training/staleness syndrome and burnout.”  They found over-training to be very common among their athletes especially during higher intensity individual sports.  Their results showed: “41% of the athletes lost their motivation for training, which in turn indicates a state of burnout. Further, 35% of the athletes reported low satisfaction with time spent on important relationships, 29% rated the relationship with their coach as ranging from very, very bad to only moderately good.”

In a very recent study Luke et al. found that, “Overuse not fatigue-related injuries were encountered in 44.7% of the subjects. They concluded that, When scheduling youth sporting events a sleep time of ≥ 7 hours should be considered to optimize safety, minimize fatigue and over-training

Where Do We Go From Here?

As indicated from the studies above, over-training is a widespread and potentially problem among young athletes in a variety of sports with the stressors not only coming from the sport itself but also with the other outside influences the athlete is facing.

It is the job of the student athlete, parents and the coaches to recognize the seriousness of the situation and do everything they can to manage stress and fatigue so it does not lead to other potentially devastating consequences.

In the second part of the article I will discuss what we as strength and conditioning coaches can do to help the student athletes without adding to the problem.

Tags: overtraining